Brussels, 17/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - By the end of 2015, the European Commission hopes to be able to present a proposal and technical fisheries measures, it announced on Wednesday 15 July, at a discussion at the committee on fisheries of the European Parliament.
In the meantime, the Commission will publish an impact assessment of these technical measures.
The committee on fisheries discussed a draft own-initiative report by Gabriel Mato (EPP, Spain), on the technical measures and the multi-annual management plans. This report is to be adopted in plenary in January 2016, although the rapporteur is going to try to speed things up. He referred to major principles such as regionalisation (and decentralisation) and the simplification of standards. Mato recommended that specific technical measures be adopted for the Mediterranean.
The president of the committee on fisheries of the EP, Alain Cadec (EPP, France), said that a certain amount of care was required with the principle of regionalisation, “the hidden face of which is the renationalisation of the common fisheries policy” (CFP). Renationalisation would mean the death of the CFP, he warned. He reiterated that he had launched a consultation of the professional sector regarding the technical measures.
The representative of the European Commission pointed out that regionalisation aims to put an end to 'micro-management' from the offices of the Commission, in Brussels. He noted that the Commission and the EP were “practically on the same wavelength” regarding these aspects, which he sees as highly optimistic. We need a system which brings technical decision-making closer to the sector and the areas where the fishing actually takes place, the Commission representative stressed. Other keywords: the simplification and adaptability of the legislation to the realities on the ground. He added that the Commission hoped that the impact assessment into the technical measures would be ready “soon”, in order to respect the looming deadlines for the presentation of the proposal.
The Commission has carried out many consultations and is hoping to create an architecture within which the co-legislators lay down the overarching principles and objectives. Technical measures will be set in place to achieve these objectives, using decentralisation through the regionalisation mechanism. The Commission intends to take technical measures applying also to the Mediterranean, where the stock situation is far less healthy than in the waters of the Atlantic. (Lionel Changeur)